Colder Than Fever

She is strangely cold as the hot water beats down on her skin and the steam it creates envelops her in what usually feels like a blanket.

She’s tired, and her immune system is fighting something somewhere in the back of her head, where her nose and throat meet.

The water collects in her long black hair and chills her fever for a moment, as her aching arms reach up for the shampoo – kept at a normal yet seemingly insurmountable height.

As the bottle squeezes and the milky soap slides into her hand, a cough musters somewhere in her lungs and body forces it out. It rattles and hurts and on the back of her tongue she has the unmistakable taste of sick.

Her arms have weighs on them as she attempts to create lather atop her head. Imagining the bowl of hot soup that her mother would put in front of her if she were here makes her momentarily hopeful that the warm serum might be placed before her when she gets out of the shower.

But as the icy hot water rinses the little bit of lather out of her hair, she reminds herself that no one even has a key to her apartment but her.